Robert Pattinson and his Films Make 2017 Best of Lists “growing more confident in his abilities and potent in his screen presence”
Robert, Good Time and The Lost City of Z are included and/or topping quite a few “Best of 2017” lists, so I thought I would collate so that we can keep track of what’s being said about Rob and/or his films.
FILM COMMENT “Best Films of 2017”
1 Good Time
After spending their early films exulting in freedom from employment, buoying and buoyed by a kind of boho-anarcho amorality, the Safdies made a film dunked in the gasoline of white privilege, and they lit a match” Eric Hynes, “Urban Legends” cover story for July/August 2017 issue
9 The Lost City of Z
“Rather than depict Fawcett’s journey as devolving into a kind of Herzogian madness, Gray and leading man Charlie Hunnam take a matter-of-fact, internalized approach to the character, treating his obsession with the possibly mythical Z a an almost practical means of emotional escape.” Michael Koresky, “The Search” feature and interview from March/April 2017
THE NEW YORKER “The Best Movies of 2017”
3. “Good Time†(Josh and Benny Safdie)
“Good Time,†starring Robert Pattinson, streaks and smears and shreds the screen with a sense of furious subjectivity.
31. “The Lost City of Z†(James Gray)
The story of a search that doesn’t come to fruition, a series of missions that don’t achieve their goals, and that nonetheless reverberate powerfully and enduringly.
THE RINGER “The 10 Best Films of 2017
1 (tied). Good Time and Dawson City: Frozen Time
One looking forward and the other back. Good Time, directed by brothers Josh and Benny Safdie and starring Benny alongside Robert Pattinson, is the movie 2017 deserves. As cinema, it’s a smooth gloss on the gritty crime movies of yore, embodying everything that’s good about the ongoing nostalgia trip currently afflicting movies and TV while falling prey to none of the usual bad habits. As pure entertainment, it’s as lively, weird, and unpredictable as any movie released this or any other year, not least because of how well the Safdies capture a sense of life on the ground in a neon-streaked New York City. As politics, well, Good Time is not political cinema, but there’s of course something to be learned from a movie that studies the calculated machinations of a white guy behaving badly, manipulating the system and the people around him as he sees fit. Good Time has unambiguously been my favorite movie of the year since it was released. The first time I saw it, I knew it was destined to become a classic, because it points to what I hope is a rich future for offbeat, dangerous, vibrant independent filmmaking. …
Also include Buddy Duress Drug Trip Story and Sienna Miller ending in The Lost City of Z in 50 Greatest Movie Moments in 2017
4. The Lost City of Z
I love jungle adventures, melodrama, and grandiose intellectual and spiritual revelations—so of course I love movies, and of course I especially love The Lost City of Z, James Gray’s rip-roaring account of real-life explorer Percy Fawcett’s professional obsession with uncovering the secrets of the Amazon. That’s the movie’s logline, at least. Gray finds a way to transform it into something bigger and more poignant: a search for the sublime, playing out against the backdrop of a stultifyingly modernized, war-torn Europe. The movie practically pushes you into the jungle, where, sure, you’ll find dysentery, piranhas, and cannibalism—but that’s the price of nature. And the benefit, which outweighs all of that, is the joyful shock of discovering that Europe’s was not the first civilization, and that there are secrets in the jungle that could reorient the course of history. Charlie Hunnam stars as the fated Fawcett, who—spoiler alert—never did come back from his last trip into the Amazon, joined by his oldest son, who likewise disappeared. Playing Fawcett’s independently minded and thoroughly modern wife, meanwhile, Sienna Miller embodies what the movie argues are the bitter ironies of the era. She, too, is an explorer—or she would be, but for her gender and the fact she and Fawcett have kids at home. It’s in part through her that Lost City of Z reveals what’s it’s been about all along: not only the journeys but also all the sacrifices, made by those who get left behind, supporting them.
SPECTRUM CULTURE “Best Film Performances of 2017”
The Safdie Brothers’ stressful Good Time is a fine film all its own, a flawed jet propulsion machine built on sweat, neon and nihilism. But as a vehicle for Robert Pattinson’s weaponized charisma, it’s a tremendous display. With every role, the Twilight thespian moves further away from the world of sparkly vampires, growing more confident in his abilities and potent in his screen presence. In Connie Nikas, the preternaturally resourceful hood at the center of Good Time, Pattinson has found the perfect delivery system for the otherworldly It Factor that made him such a heartthrob to begin with.
Connie is an arch manipulator, a small-time criminal who dual wields matinee idol good looks and white privilege to extricate himself from dangerous situation after dangerous situation. The film begins with Connie roping his developmentally challenged younger brother Nick (Ben Safdie, pulling double duty) into robbing a bank in black face, a simple enough crime that lands Nick in jail and Connie on the run trying to hustle enough dough to bail him out. In After Hours style, Connie embarks on a night of being backed into an exponentially fucked series of corners. His scrappy, canine-like desperation is haunting, but in conjunction with his conniving ways, Connie is an underdog who terrifies us more than he elicits sympathy.
There’s a savagery to his grifting that Pattinson bravely keeps from being too likable. Connie is congenial exactly enough to get what he needs but never enough to let the audience forget what he really is. The film leaves him in a spot he can’t sweet talk or con his way out of, but the preceding events provide a strong enough argument that even that difficult fate won’t be enough to hold him down. – Dom Griffin
10. Good Time
What we said: “The setting is present-day New York City, yet the film’s ultra-gritty, gutter-level milieu instantly recalls the past masters of Gotham pulp: Abel Ferrara, Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese. The Safdies were raised in Queens and Manhattan, and they populate their film with precisely the kind of scum which the city’s most famous fictional anti-hero, Travis Bickle, so aggressively stood up against.â€
10. Good Time
Stylised like a pulp fiction thriller from the 80s, this neon dream for the Safdie Brothers’ crime thriller is a surreal delight. Or maybe there’s just something inherently amusing about a teeny tiny Robert Pattinson. Either way, we like it.
5. Good Time
Acid-tinged, thick and turbulent, Oneohtrix Point Never’s award-winning score is a true tour de force. As relentless (sometimes more so) than the narrative’s anxious rhythm, its gamified energy swallows dialogue up and spits it back out. The frenzy ends in OPN’s most tender song to date: ‘The Pure and the Damned’, a gritty, utterly flooring ballad with Iggy Pop.
GQ “The Best Movies of 2017 and where to watch them”
ESQUIREÂ “25 Best Movies of 2017”
9. The Lost City of Z
Acclaimed American filmmaker James Gray (Two Lovers, The Immigrant) ventures for the first time outside New York City—and into the dark heart of the Amazon—with The Lost City of Z, an adaptation of David Grann’s 2009 non-fiction book of the same name. Such a geographic relocation, however, does little to alter Gray’s fundamental artistic course, as his latest—about early 20th century British explorer Percy Fawcett’s (Charlie Hunnam) repeated efforts to locate a lost South American civilization that he believed to be more advanced than any previously discovered—boasts his usual classical aesthetics and empathetic drama. Energized by a hint of Apocalypse Now‘s into-the-wild madness, this entrancing period piece is at once a grand adventure, a social critique about class and intolerance, and a nuanced character study about an individual caught between his love for—and desire to escape—his environment. Led by Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller, it’s also one of the finest-acted dramas of the year.
14. Good Time
Arguably the finest male performance of the year comes courtesy of Robert Pattinson in Good Time, the latest grungy New York City street drama from rising superstar directors Ben and Josh Safdie (Heaven Knows What). In this breakneck nocturnal thriller, Pattinson is Connie, a low-level hood who finds himself on a desperate search for bailout cash after a bank robbery goes awry and his accomplice—his mentally challenged brother Nick (Ben Safdie)—is arrested and given a one-way ticket to Rikers Island. With a scruffy goatee, disheveled hair that he eventually bleaches a garish blonde, and amoral desperation in his eyes, Pattinson proves a mesmerizing man on the run, his motivations cloudy, his behavior unethical, and his every decision more foolhardy than the last. The Safdies’ up-close-and-personal shooting style sticks closely to their protagonist as he falls deeper and deeper into a hole of his own making, ultimately generating an intensity of sound, movement and mania that makes watching the film feel akin to being on a rollercoaster with faulty brakes.
PASTE MAGAZINE “The 25 Best Movies of 2017”
2. The Lost City of Z
Year:Â 2017
Director:Â James Gray
James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is an anti-period movie. In the vein of The Immigrant, Gray’s glorious last film, Z is fascinated with its milieu (this time we begin across the Atlantic in Blighty, from 1906 to 1925) and luxuriously adorned with period detail—but the strangulated social climate and physically claustrophobic spaces of its ostensibly sophisticated Western society make that environment appear totally unappealing. Only once we reach the Amazon, untainted by Western hands, does the film relax, its beguiling score and open-air scenery turning inviting. There, in a land of uncomplicated tribes and indifferent wilderness, a man like soldier and explorer Major Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) can find freedom from the narrow-mindedness infecting early 20th century Britain. Darius Khondji’s cinematography doesn’t just complement Gray’s movie, it deepens its meaning, strengthening the appeal of Fawcett’s jungle, endlessly verdant and mysterious where home in England appears dull and monotone. Every frame is sumptuous and misty-eyed, always pining for a lost era when adventurers might still find corners of the Earth completely untouched. (Gray may show little love for Empire, but he depicts colonial exploration in itself as a romantic adventure.) The film doesn’t make for much complexity, but it feels deeply. Like Fawcett, it aches—like his obsession, the jungle, it envelops, casting a lasting spell. —Brogan Morris19. Good Time
Year:Â 2017
Directors:Â Josh and Benny Safdie
The hero of Good Time is one of the canniest individuals in recent cinema, which might seem like an odd thing to say about a scummy lowlife who screws up a bank heist in the film’s opening reels. But don’t underestimate Connie: Several of the people who cross his path make that mistake, and he gets the better of them every time. Connie is played by Robert Pattinson in a performance so locked-in from the first second that it shoots off an electric spark from the actor to the audience: Just sit back, he seems to be telling us. I’ve got this under control. The financially strapped character lives in Queens, unhappy that his mentally challenged brother Nick (Benny Safdie) is cooped up in a facility that, Connie believes, doesn’t do enough to help him. Impulsively, Connie strong-arms Nick into helping him rob a bank. They make off with thousands of dollars, but what they don’t realize is that they live in the real world, not a movie. A paint bomb goes off in their bag, staining the money and the criminals’ clothes. Shaken and trying not to panic, Connie and Nick abandon their getaway car, quickly raising the suspicion of some nearby cops, who chase down Nick. Connie escapes, determined to get his brother out of jail—either through bail money or other means. As Connie, Pattinson is shockingly vital and present, unabashedly throwing himself into any situation. Following their star’s lead, the filmmakers deliver a jet-fueled variation on their usual intricate exploration of New York’s marginalized citizens. Good Timefeatures no shootouts or car chases—there isn’t a single explosion in the whole film. The Safdies and Pattinson don’t need any of that. Like Connie, they thrive on their wits and endless inventiveness—the thrill comes in marveling at how far it can take them. —Tim Grierson
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER “13 Best Film Performances of 2017”
Robert Pattinson “Good Time”
With his pretty-boy looks muted by a scarecrow hair-do, a scabby beard and a sweaty complexion exposed by relentless close-ups, one-time pin-up Pattinson finally finds a role that truly shows his mettle and his range. In this low-budget, high-octane thriller from New York co-directing brothers Benny and Josh Safdie, the actor stars as Connie, a criminal desperate to free his mentally challenged brother from jail after their bank robbery goes wrong. The English-born star nails Connie’s outer-borough vowel sounds and caged animal twitchiness. But perhaps even more impressive is the way he finds a physicality that suits the character, right down to the rolling, loping gait, expressive of both cockiness and hesitancy. It’s an electric performance. — Leslie FelperinÂ
THE PLAYLIST “The Best Cinematography in 2017”
1. Darius Khondji – “The Lost City Of Zâ€Â
One of the more ridiculous little byways of Academy Award lore (and the Cinematography category seems to have quite a few) is that regular Haneke, Fincher and Jeunet/Caro DP Darius Khondji, as sure a superstar as the profession has yielded, has been nominated only once, and that was for “Evita†(he lost to John Seale for “The English Patient†— oh, Oscar, what a fickle old goat you are). We have to hope he lands his second nod for James Gray‘s shimmering, gorgeous, searching epic “The Lost City of Z.†Not only does it represent a leap on even from their beautiful last collaboration, “The Immigrant,†it is also just one of two exceptionally well-shot 2017 films (the other being Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja“) he has under his belt after a slightly fallow period making bad Woody Allen movies look better than they deserved. Across the rest of this list there are examples of every different type of cinematography, but within “The Lost City of Z†Khondji seems to encompass them all, with his magnificently supple camerawork breathing life and sinuous grace into the often staid period film. The English sections are by turns stately and homely; conversations between characters are shot with warmth and dexterity; and the many astonighing jungle scenes are nourished by an almost anthropological fascination that makes them so much more than pretty, verdant, dramatic compositions. And it builds to that extraordinary finale in which it almost feels like the film leaves the camera the way a soul leaves a body: this ending achieves symphonic levels of metaphysical grace and wonder in which, and it’s the highest compliment we can pay, the cinematography becomes indivisible from the editing, the scoring and the sound design in delivering a sensory, sublime rush of purest, holiest cinema.6. Sean Price Williams – “Good Timeâ€
This is a list of best cinematography of the year, but if it were a list of best cinematographers, for sheer ubiquity, we might have to put Sean Price Williams even further up this list. However, turning in memorable work in no fewer than three totally different 2017 indie titles (Michael Almereyda‘s sedate “Marjorie Prime“ and Nathan Silver‘s Sirkian melodrama “Thirst Street†being the others), Williams’ most remarkable 2017 achievement is definitely in the Safdie brothers‘ energetic and propulsive “Good Time,â€Â which careens insanely from heist movie to chase movie to hallucinatory head-trip to heist movie again, before slowing rapidly and gracefully to an unexpectedly moving finale. It’s a take on the “one crazy night†genre, as a revelatory Robert Pattinson pounds through the streets and houses and tatty funfairs of Queens, and Williams’ cinematography is key in creating not only the escalating stakes, but also an insider’s vision of the borough that is as critical as it is fond. Neon-streaked and down-at heel, the nighttime sequences especially sing with a kind of sleazy poetry that Williams, apparently not slowed for a second by working for the first time in 35mm as opposed to the grainy close-up digital style that made his name, brings to every scintillating moment.
VARIETY “10 Best Uses of Music in Film”
3.  Oneohtrix Point Never, “The Pure and the Damnedâ€(“Good Timeâ€): In perhaps the year’s most innovative movie score, the mysterious Boston-raised, Brooklyn-based composer formerly known as Daniel Lopatin mirrors the Safdie brothers’ frenetic, disorienting day-and-night in the life of Robert Pattinson’s tireless, yet charismatic hustler, who rushes against time and circumstance to free his mentally challenged sibling from jail. This end credit song is a rare moment of introspective calm in the chaos.
INDIEWIRE “The 25 Best Movie Moments of 2017, According to IndieWire Critic David Ehrlich”
14. “Good Timeâ€
Memorable Moment: “I think something very important is happening and it’s deeply connected to my purpose.†Brought to life by the best and most committed performance of Robert Pattinson’s increasingly dynamic career, Connie Nikas is one of the most unforgettable characters of the year. A toxic striver who embroils his handicapped brother in a bank heist that obviously goes wrong, Connie wants what’s best for the people in his life, but literally everything he does just makes things worse for them. In that one narcissistic line, we can immediately trace the distance between Connie’s limitless potential and his spiraling plight. Those words are enough to follow him all the way back down to earth.
BORN MUSIC TOP “15 Music Videos”
8. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER FEAT. IGGY POP – THE PURE AND THE DAMNED
The Safdie brothers’ latest film ‘Good Time’ starring Robert Pattinson, features an anxious, fretful score from remarkable electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never. To make the soundtrack even more captivating, the experimental musician presents a sublime parting gift in the form of a collaboration with The Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop. However, it doesn’t end there. The Safdie Brothers also directed the accompanying video, starring Benny Safdie, Pattinson and Pop.
The ominous ballad begins with a CGI Iggy Pop eerily dancing whilst singing in his overtly artistic manner, proceeding to enter a cabin in the woods as Robert Pattinson stares down a wolf whilst weilding a sword. ‘The Pure And The Damned’ oozes mystery and tension, and yet relaxes the soul in a most chilling way. An enigmatic masterpiece with true ‘Raw Power’. RB
ROGER EBERT.COM The Great Performances of 2017
Robert Pattinson as Connie Nikas in “Good Time†by Vikram Murthi
In “Good Time,” Robert Pattinson imbues his character Connie, amateur bank robber and wannabe savior, with unbridled arrogance and streetwise charm. Connie weaponizes both of those traits against the larger Queens area so he can scrounge up enough bail money to save his mentally challenged brother from Rikers. He schemes his way into every potentially advantageous situation imaginable, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. But Pattinson’s best ploy is to never once project doubt or hesitation as his character digs himself a deeper hole; Connie never once believes he’s ever going to get caught, even though the audience instinctively knows that there’s only one way for his story to end. Thus, Pattinson’s performance and “Good Time”‘s anxious tone are completely in sync—he brings a high-wire energy that directors Benny and Josh Safdie capitalize on from the moment he springs on screen. Pattinson also leans into his star power just enough for a certain political reading of Connie’s exploits to emerge: only a good-looking white kid could use his innate privilege as a tool to con so many unsuspecting people for so long. As Connie becomes more desperate and more sleep-deprived, he rapidly loses the thread of his poorly woven plan, but Pattinson conveys an inner calm that’s deceptively trustworthy the entire time. He wants you to believe that he knows exactly what he’s doing, even though he’s just making it up as he goes along.
THE PLAYLIST Best Performances of 2017
2. Robert Pattinson as Connie in “Good Timeâ€
We can’t talk about Pattinson in 2017 without also mentioning his compelling and gentle supporting role in James Gray‘s grave and beautiful “The Lost City of Z.†But it’s his borderline unrecognizable turn in the Safdies’ “Good Time†that is the career-remaking revelation. Connie’s trippy, one-crazy-night, botched-heist shenanigans could merely be manic (and the film’s energy never flags), but Pattinson, beneath an astringently bottle-blonde mop of hair, (especially opposite an equally excellent Benny Safdie as his mentally challenged brother), brings the very thing his fame-making role as a vampire in the “Twilight†series definitely didn’t have: soul. R-Patz is dead; long live Robert Pattinson.
JAKES TAKES “Top 10 Movies of 2017”
No. 10 “Good Time” It’s the first on the video
INTERVIEW The 10 Best Films of 2017
6. Good Time
Director brothers Josh and Benny Safdie have been on the brink of greatness for a while now, and with this breakneck crime thriller, the pair finally assume their rightful place as the heirs to a visceral New York style of filmmaking that was perfected by a young Martin Scorsese. Set over the course of one batshit night, Connie (Robert Pattinson, in his finest performance yet) will do just about anything to free his brother Nick from custody after a botched bank robbery. The movie slams the gas pedal from the opening moments, and doesn’t let up until its final melancholy minutes. Propelling the story along is the alien synths of Oneohtrix Point Never, who composed the year’s most fascinating score. — Ben Barna
BORN MUSIC Top 15 Music Videos
8. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER FEAT. IGGY POP – THE PURE AND THE DAMNED
The Safdie brothers’ latest film ‘Good Time’ starring Robert Pattinson, features an anxious, fretful score from remarkable electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never. To make the soundtrack even more captivating, the experimental musician presents a sublime parting gift in the form of a collaboration with The Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop. However, it doesn’t end there. The Safdie Brothers also directed the accompanying video, starring Benny Safdie, Pattinson and Pop.
The ominous ballad begins with a CGI Iggy Pop eerily dancing whilst singing in his overtly artistic manner, proceeding to enter a cabin in the woods as Robert Pattinson stares down a wolf whilst weilding a sword. ‘The Pure And The Damned’ oozes mystery and tension, and yet relaxes the soul in a most chilling way. An enigmatic masterpiece with true ‘Raw Power’. RB
@YahooMoviesUK’s 20 best movies of 2017
8) ‘Good Time’
4. Good Time. I hesitate to compare anything to one of my favorite 1970s films, Dog Day Afternoon. But Good Time brings the same crazy combination of ingenuity and idiocy and the same detailed appreciation of the New York City landscape to its breathless tale of a bank robbery gone wrong after two brothers (Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie), one of them mentally challenged, bungle the getaway. The low-budget film is co-directed by Safdie and his brother Josh, who prove in scene after knockout scene that they can orchestrate suspense as well as any other filmmaker working today.
THE NEW YORK TIMES Other Favourites in Best Movies of 2017
Good Time and The Lost City of Z don’t make lists but get a mention.
D’Marge Underrated Films of 2017
Official Synopsis: After a botched bank robbery lands his younger brother in prison, Constantine “Connie†Nikas (Robert Pattinson) embarks on a twisted odyssey through the city’s underworld in an increasingly desperate—and dangerous—attempt to get his brother Nick (Benny Safdie) out of jail. Over the course of one adrenalised night, Connie finds himself on a mad descent into violence and mayhem as he races against the clock to save his brother and himself, knowing their lives hang in the balance.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%What Critics Said: “Containing as much forward motion as any film in recent memory, Good Time is as heartbreaking as it is exhilarating.†(Wall Street Journal)
LA TIMES Justin Chang’s Top 10 Films
Plus 20 honorable mentions: …. Good Time and The Lost City of Z
No 3 The Lost City of Z
Adapted from David Grann’s 2009 best seller, James Gray’s resplendent, symphonic adventure tells the story of real-life British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who devoted his life to locating a mythical lost city in the Amazon. A gorgeous and passionately crafted picture, it captures the wonders and horrors of one man’s obsession, a mysterious mirror-world Eden. Films with this kind of grand sweep and dreamy energy don’t come along every day. The Lost City of Z is itself a message in a bottle, a missive from a lost city of movies.
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST The 25 Best Films Released in Hong Kong
9. Good Time
Good Time sees British actor Robert Pattinson work with little-known New York filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie in a suffocating, anxiety-fuelled crime drama. A feverish head trip that seizes you by the throat, this could be one of the best performances of his career.
CAHIERS DU CINEMA Top 10 Films
7. Good Time – Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie
FOX 5 SAN DIEGO The Top 10 Best and Worst Movies of 2017
But the movies below, had more than just one or two great performances. They also had stories that were captivating.
…
2. GOOD TIME. All those Twilight fans should have a good time with this performance from Robert Pattinson, as a criminal with a mentally challenged brother. Ben and Josh Safdie, the writer, directors, and star of this movie…gave us a flick that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I saw it six months ago. It was a toss up between putting this at the number two spot or number one. I basically flipped a coin. My original review: http://fox5sandiego.com/2017/08/27/good-time/
BIRTH.MOVIES.DEATH Jacob Knight’s Seventeen Favourite Films of 2017
#3. Good Time (d. The Safdie Brothers, w. Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie)Â
When you talk to the Safdie Brothers (Heaven Knows What), they realize that their latest, Good Time, feels like a movie out of touch with modern filmmaking, while still being completely in sync with the times in which we live. Its central bank robbing brothers dash from their latest crime, get tripped up by the cops, and we end up spending one wild night trying to get the mentally handicapped sibling out of Rikers before the animals inside eat him alive. Good Time is as propulsive as motion pictures get – feeling like it was shot out of a fucking cannon, as we wheel, deal, steal, and almost get more than one person killed along the way. The naturalistic live-shooting style the Safdies employ is immersive, getting you into the parking lot of a Queens White Castle and the fluorescent, screeching bowels of shithead central, Adventureland. But there’s also a sociopolitical subtext injected into the proceedings. This is a world of where the lowest Caucasian male will still be passed over during a police stop for his black counterparts. That’s what puts Good Time over the top, and marks it as the pinnacle of our current NYC Grime resurgence (which includes the aforementioned Transfiguration): it marries pulp aesthetics with a genuine POV regarding how cities treats their multicultural denizens.
ROLLING STONE 25 Reasons to Love Movies in 2017
Robert Pattinson Got Dirty, …
Two immersive performances, two career highs. Robert Pattinson had already continued his trajectory into in-house arthouse kook this year with The Lost City of Z, sporting impressive facial hair and sweatiness as an old-time jungle explorer. Then came Good Time, and you suddenly felt like directors Josh and Benny Safdie had discovered a whole other actor behind that pretty face. You can practically smell the desperation emanating off his greasy outer-borough criminal determined to spring his hospitalized brother or die tryin’ – it’s the best thing the star has ever done, and we say this as big Cosmopolis fans.
THE TELEGRAPH (UK)Â From Star Wars: The Last Jedi to Paddington 2: the best movies of 2017
Ranking out of 93 movies
The Lost City of Z
26.  We said: “As a work of filmmaking, it’s an immediate classic, fit to stand beside the best of Werner Herzog and Stanley Kubrick – though it’s also entirely its own thing, classical to its bones yet not quite like anything that’s come before it. In earlier films like The Immigrant and We Own The Night, I’ve occasionally found Gray’s careful, level-headed style a little distancing and hard to love. After this one, I had to retrieve my soul from the ceiling with a long-handled feather duster”.
Good Time
86. We said: “The Safdies are certainly offering a love-it-or-hate-it style proposition, above all with the infernal sound grinding away, and their filmmaking can teeter on the brink of look-ma arrogance. It’s Pattinson here who manages to centre and save it, stripping himself free of artificial mannerism and working beautifully with the non-professionals bulking out the cast. In a good way, you could well believe this was an acting debut.”
TRIBECA FILM The 10 Best Male Film Peformances of Early 2017
GOOD TIME isn’t the only 2017 movie in which Robert Pattinson delivered a chameleonic, virtuosic performance …
Charlie Hunnam, Angus Macfadyen, and Robert Pattinson, The Lost City of Z
The filmmaking in James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is so overwhelming in its across-the-board virtuosity that the entire production could have probably survived performances that were merely adequate. But besides being woefully undervalued among modern moviegoers in general, Gray is also an adept and equally undervalued actor’s director who has drawn out layered and authentically lived-in characterizations from performers of all stripes, each one stitched seamlessly into the fabrics of his period and milieu-specific creations.
Gray’s latest, a panoramic, golden-hued historical drama chronicling the life and exploits of the hard-driving British explorer and officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), is no exception, featuring invaluable and selfless character work from an extensive ensemble, including a bearded and barely recognizable Robert Pattinson, whose acting is largely undetectable as Fawcett’s sly right-hand man, Corporal Henry Costin. Exquisitely scaling back his own distinct presence, Pattinson finds grace notes of wry humor and warmth within a character who is never once allowed to seize the movie for himself yet manages to exude a fond and increasingly familiar personality that earns him a bittersweet farewell that Pattinson beautifully underplays. …
BEN FRANK Films That Made an Impact in 2017
I saw 88 new releases this year, so here are the 20 films I think really made an impact in 2017.
5.
#GoodTime Good Time is an engrossing tour de force. It evokes conflicted feelings of anger, disgust, and adoration for being so damn detestable and great at the same time. Under all that repressive YA angst lies a Robert Pattinson that’s destined for cinematic excellence.
VICE The 9 Best Movies We Saw in 2017
GOOD TIME
The Safdie brothers have proven themselves expert chroniclers of the terrible things terrible people do for the sake of misplaced love, and Good Time is perhaps their most potent exploration of that theme yet. A neon-soaked, Scorcese-tastic, late-night criminal trip through New York City, every scene crackles with intensity thanks to a nuanced and complicated portrait provided by Robert Pattinson, who’s quickly proving to be one of the best actors going. How about that? —Larry Fitzmaurice
THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLYÂ The Top Ten Films (Plus Four Critics’ Picks) of 2017
1.GOOD TIME
Raw, rambunctious, and funny, Good Time redeems American cinema from the doldrums of pre-packaged comic-book franchises and inert middle-class dramas. Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) traverses New York’s five boroughs, stealing and jumping fences, to rescue his mentally ill brother from a state-run facility. Dramatizing Connie’s odyssey with desperate dark humor, Ben and Josh Safdie emerge as unique filmmakers capable of toeing the line between exploitation and gritty social realism with actual heart. —Laura Jaramillo
THE SHEPHERD EXPRESS The Best Films of 2017
4. Good Time
Robert Pattinson’s coolly ferocious con man leaves a trail of damaged lives in his wake in Josh and Benny Safdie’s outrageous urban nightmare, a film that manages to match the relentlessness of its protagonist.
COLLIDER The Best Cinematography of 2017
3. The Lost City of Z
There are few cinematographers working today who traffic in beauty as often and as impressively as Darius Khondji, and while his career is full of fruitful collaborations with directors, his work with James Gray has resulted in some particularly spectacular cinematography. The Lost City of Z is almost epic in scope, tracking the early 1900s explorations of Percy Fawcett into the heart of the South African jungle but also venturing to Ireland, the English countryside, and World War I battlefields. Through it all, Khondji works his magic, offering up painterly shots that reinforce the deadly beauty of the natural world. Khondji also goes 2-for-2 in jaw-dropping final shots for James Gray films, basically taking his insane final shot from The Immigrant as a challenge to himself to one-up it in The Lost City of Z.
THE GUARDIAN The Best Films of 2017 That You Didn’t See
The Lost City of Z
If a tree falls in an unpopulated (but exquisitely shot) forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? James Gray’s ravishing historical quest drama proves it does: it’s a rousing, resounding film scaled and styled like a monumental event, and even if mass audiences didn’t show up to see it land, it’s still echoing with me nearly a year later.
You can feel the presence of David Lean and Werner Herzog in the sturdy bones of this epic, led by a never-better Charlie Hunnam as the doomed English explorer Percy Fawcett, his dreams of uncovering El Dorado cherished as dearly by the film as they are by its wayward hero. It’s no spoiler to say they never come true, which makes Gray’s film a uniquely broken valentine: it’s somehow a grand, transporting, heart-swelling ode to failure, and if it’s not surprising that the masses didn’t show up for that proposition, we should treasure it just the same. GL
IONCINEMA
 No. 17 Good Time
CENTRAL ATTACK 2017 Was A Weird Year for Movies
Performance of the Year
Robert Pattinson in Good Time and The Lost City of Z. I pray that we never again see a franchise as thoroughly rotten as the Twilight Saga, which consisted of five increasingly incomprehensible films featuring terrible dialogue, atrocious acting and tepid direction. In the five years since it ended, we’ve been doubly blessed because even the worst blockbusters often aren’t that bad, and that stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have left that life behind. While Stewart’s opted for quiet performances from acclaimed international filmmakers, Pattison went much bolder. Though neither of these film made my top 10, both were brought to life by this former Hot Topic T-shirt icon. In Good Time, he’s a con man spending one wild night trying to get his mentally disabled brother out of jail. With bleached blond hair and an askew moral compass, he’s nowhere near as smart as he thinks, but definitely as determined as they come. In The Lost City of Z, he’s the loyal companion to Percy Fawcett (a never-better Charlie Hunnam), who joins him on several journeys to the Amazon until the cost simply becomes too high. The range he displays here will make you forget all his years spent as a pasty, sparkly vampire. — KM
Also made no. 8 in Javier Fuentes Top 10 films.
THE COURIER EXPRESS Best Films of 2017 and The Biggest Disappointments
7. Good Time
“Good Time†is a great film about a bad night as a robbery goes wrong, and Robert Pattinson is at the center of this confusion playing a different kind of creature of the night that makes you forget his “Twilight†turns. An original, chilling crime thriller from the Safdie Brothers with a surprising dose of heart.
CANTONREP Dane Kane:Â 10 Favourites from a so-so year of movie going
GOOD TIME. This grimy and relentless crime thriller put me in mind of in-your-face ’70s classics “Taxi Driver†and “Dog Day Afternoon.†Robert Pattinson (a reliably fine actor post-“Twilightâ€) coerces his mentally challenged brother into a bank robbery that goes terribly wrong, leading to a string of increasingly desperate events that unfold in what feels like jittery real time. The directing brothers Ben (who plays the brother) and Josh Safdie (who co-wrote the script) are a raw-talent duo to watch.
RUNNERS-UP: “Battle of the Sexes,†“The Glass Castle,†“Ingrid Goes West,†“Okja,†“The Meyerowitz Stories,†“Lost City of Z,†“Wonder Woman,†“Spider-Man: Homecoming.â€
SACRAMENTO NEWS:Â Daniel Barnes’s Top 10 Films
Good Time
Robert Pattinson’s coolly ferocious con man leaves a trail of damaged lives in his wake in Josh and Benny Safdie’s outrageous urban nightmare, a film that manages to match the relentlessness of its protagonist.
CHICO NEWS & REVIEWS CN&R Critics Reviews Abundant Year of Movies
• Great performances: Isabelle Huppert in Things to Come and Elle; Robert Pattinson in Good Time; David Lynch in Lucky; Adam Driver in Logan Lucky and Paterson; Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
• Action dramas of exceptional intelligence and character:Wind River, Good Time, Logan Lucky, Mudbound.
FANBOY GALLERY
10. Robert Pattinson
as Connie Nikas in #GoodTime (2017)#RobertPattinson‘s high quality and full range performance in an assertive role as a scumbag con man who loves his brother. Twisty and oddly touching.#FanboyGalleryBestOf2017 👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/jOTI2gtIFB
— Fanboy Gallery (@FanboyGallery) December 28, 2017
INDIEWIRE Directors Pick Their Best Movies in 2017
Guillermo del Torro (The Shape of Water)
10. “Brawl in Cell Block 99â€
9. “Ingrid Goes Westâ€
8. “Tigers Are Not Afraidâ€
7. “Good Timeâ€
6. “The Meyerowitz Storiesâ€
5. “Get Outâ€
4. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouriâ€
3. “Dunkirkâ€
2. “Lady Birdâ€
1. “A Ghost Storyâ€Robert Eggers (The Witch)
Regrettably, as usual, there are many films that I did not see this year (including several especially acclaimed titles). In no particular order, these were the films that I enjoyed most – all of them were complete in vision and execution, and all were riveting.
“Rawâ€
“The Killing of a Sacred Deerâ€
“Get Outâ€
“Good Timeâ€
“The Squareâ€
“The Florida Projectâ€I loved the photography and tangible atmosphere of “The Beguiledâ€Â and “The Lost City of Zâ€(Z also had some great fake mustaches).
Good Timeâ€Â by Safdie Brothers: Rob Pattinson is not a vampire.
Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Nameâ€)
Top 20 in alphabetical order:
…“The Lost City of Z,†by James Gray
Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip)
9. “Lost City of Zâ€: That makes six out of ten shot on film.
James Ponsaldt (The Circle)
Good Time in Top 10 – no particular order
The first scene of the Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time†is exemplary in this light – no other scene I’ve watched in 2017 dealt so boldly with all these confusing and conflictual aesthetic and political conflicts. In it, a seething, developmentally disabled young man (Nick Nikas, played by the film’s co-director Benny Safdie) sits in the office of a psychiatrist (Peter Verby, in “real life†not a professional actor, but a criminal attorney), who is administering some kind of cognitive test meant to elicit from the young man some account of his own violent history and tendencies. Under the guise of soliciting therapeutic, healing self-knowledge, the psychiatrist cannot but help betray his performance to be in the service of the state and its institutional power. Shot primarily in extreme close ups, the scene first solicits our concern for the psychiatrist’s safety (Safdie’s performance is electrically on edge); but it is the state violence of the psychiatrist’s probing, and the intensity of that violence as it is revealed on Safdie’s tear-stained face, that alerts us to the film’s greater empathies, especially as the session is interrupted and the scene ended with the entrance of Nick’s brother Connie (played by Robert Pattinson), who, in the name of family, pulls his brother from the office (and into a woefully mis-executed crime). The Nikas family “organization,†brought to life in the hybrid documentary-fiction language of the Safdies, never had a chance against the powers serving the crime family currently in the White House, but the reality of their resistance, as evidenced in Benny Safdie’s tears, is an eloquent reminder of what’s at stake in the current battles waged within the images we circulate, and the battles hardly visible but no less real.
Craig Zoebel (Z for Zachariah)
I’m embarrassed to say that I also haven’t yet caught up with “Good Time†before writing this list, though that is the film I most look forward to seeing. That the Safdie brothers also had a slam dunk year means something is going right in indie film.
THE FILM STAGE The Best Performances of 2017
4. Robert Pattinson (Good Time)
One of the year’s most engrossing and kinetic performances comes from Robert Pattinson as Connie, a sociopathic New York street hustler, in Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time. While the film overflows with lucid and grounded performances, Pattinson is the standout as he utterly vanishes into the role, evoking the feel of a living and breathing flaming car wreck: too shocking to ignore and too dangerous to touch. Pathologically manipulative, Connie uses and reuses everyone he encounters for his own selfish needs, abandoning them after he’s eaten his fill. He epitomizes King Midas in reverse. Yet, Pattinson endows the conman with burning charisma and fiendish imagination, morphing his every move into a fascinating dance from which we cannot look away. We loath Connie, but still find ourselves gob smacked with curiosity to see just what he will do next. How low will this scumbag sink? Connie’s only signs of emotional sincerity, faint as they are, connect to his mentally disabled brother, who he genuinely loves, but still employs to help pull off a daylight bank robbery which goes horribly wrong. Pattinson breathtakingly navigates a towering balancing act, bringing to life an unforgettably repulsive and morbidly captivating pulp character. –Tony H.
TORONTO FILM REVIEW Top 10 Films of 2017
1 Good Time …
9 The Lost City of Z
VARIETY 13 Most Underrated Films of 2017
2. “The Lost City of Zâ€
Domestic box office: $8.5 million
In “The Lost City of Z,†James Gray has crafted a swashbuckling adventure with the heart of a lush period movie, set in the depths of the Amazon jungle circa the 1920s. The leader of the film’s travelogues is real-life explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who is accompanied by his wingman Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), while his feminist wife (Sienna Miller, fantastic) is left to worry back home in London. The movie quietly slipped out of theaters last spring from Amazon Studios—though it would have also been right at home with Merchant Ivory Productions. The film’s many vocal defenders on social media, including Variety’s Guy Lodge, are right; this should be seen.11. “Good Timeâ€Â
Domestic box office: $2.0 million
Actually, it’s been a great year for former “Twilight†stars. When Robert Pattinson first appears on screen in “Good Time,†as a lanky bank robber about to pull off a heist, I had no idea it was him. The Safdie Brothers have finally given the actor a proper indie vehicle (after false starts in “Cosmopolis†and “Maps to the Starsâ€).
CBS This Morning @ErikDavis
“”Outstanding Robert Pattinson. It’s a travesty that this man is not being nominated for awards.”
“Outstanding Robert Pattinson. It’s a travesty that this man is not being nominated for awards.” @GoodTimeMov https://t.co/bEIWH6J31a
— Susan ✨ (@wishefulthinker) December 30, 2017
SAG | INDIE’s Favourite Films of 2017
- Darrien’s Favourites:Â Good Time
- Eliza’s Favourites:Â Good Time
- Colin’s Favourites:
-  Good Time – Another edge-of-your seat pick. The cast kills it (special shoutout to Benny Safdie’s performance!)
- The Lost City of Z – An old-fashioned adventure.
- Shefali’s Favourites:
- The ones that got away:  Good Time – I still can’t believe I didn’t get around to seeing Good Time. Based on my love for Get Out, Ingrid Goes West, and just high-anxiety-inducing films in general I know I would’ve loved it. I failed. But hopefully I can snag a screener over the holidays.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNEÂ Celebrating the best and vilifying the worst that Hollywood offered in 2017
Best Movies
4. Good Time
Anybody who knew Robert Pattinson as the stone-faced, pale-skinned vampire from the widely-maligned Twilight series got a stark reality check in the form of Good Time, the latest film from the up-and-coming sibling duo of Josh and Benny Safdie and arguably the surprise of the year for me.
Pattinson, almost unrecognisable in the scruffy goatee and bleached blonde hair, turns in the best performance of his career thus far as Connie, a man on the run who sinks deeper and deeper under the weight of his own bad decisions on a cold winter night in New York. And as the film escalates and oscillates at an increasingly unrelenting tempo, you can’t help but sit back and embrace the chaos. The entire thing moves at a break-neck pace, amplified by the fact that its gorgeous cinematography immerses you in a neon-lit New York night while the dizzying synth soundtrack keeps buzzing in your head long after the film is over.
The credit of course goes to the Safdies who directed this film with a distinct visceral edge, and perhaps even greater credit to them for writing a role for Pattinson where he is able showcase an authenticity and a range never before seen in his work.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
In the Times Arts Awards 2017 (https://t.co/pnkeGZeruM), the winner of most surprisingly brilliant film performance was (shock!) Robert Pattinson in Good Time – here’s @KevinTMaher‘s interview with him from November in @thetimeshttps://t.co/5K70ThxZOx pic.twitter.com/4U1gf4AepV
— TimesTheatre (@timestheatre) December 30, 2017
THE BOSTON GLOBE Top 10 Movies of 2017
For that matter, was there a crime film as risky yet as shambling as “Good Time,†from Benny and Josh Safdie, in which former “Twilight†sigh guy Robert Pattinson plays a hapless mook on one live-wire night of bad decisions? The character was reprehensible and the filmmaking electric; somewhere around the midpoint, you might start realizing this is a great bleak comedy and that everyone involved is walking a high wire you didn’t even know was there.
MIAMI FILM AWARDS 2017 Local Critics Pick Their Favourites
Good Time:
Best Lead Performance – Robert Pattinson nominated and received 8 votes (Timothée Chalamet won with 13 votes).
Best Score|Soundtrack – Oneohtrix Point Never (with 7 votes) -Â Won.
Best Picture:Â 4 votes
Best Director:Â 2 votes
Best Screenplay: 2 votes
Best Ensemble: 1 vote
Best Cinematography (received votes)
Best Cinematic Moment – Â sequence that takes place in Adventureland.
The Lost City of Z:
Best Supporting Performance:Â Robert Pattinson -Â The Lost City of ZÂ (tied with 4 votes)
Nominated for Best Screenplay (3 votes)
Best Picture:Â 3 votes.
Best Cinematography:Â 3 votes
THE PLAYLIST Ryan Oliver’s Top 25 Films of 2017 in Video
No. 1 Good Time
Â
FLIX66 The Ten Best Movies of 2017
HONORABLE MENTION: GOOD TIME – I heard absolutely nothing about this movie before I screened it and it really took me by surprise.  Robert Pattinson turns in an amazing performance (he was also great in this year’s LOST CITY OF Z) about a criminal on the run from a poorly executed bank heist. His main goal is to free his mentally ill brother from being sent to prison.  Taking place over the course of one evening, GOOD TIME is a wild, fast moving, quick thinking character observation about a manipulative bad guy with misplaced morals who has an honest intention.
THE FILM STAGE Top 50 Films of 2017
No. 1 Good Time (Safdie Bros)
Like waking up to start your day in your dingy flat, only to realize you dosed three tabs of high-grade LSD before drifting off the night before; as the room shifts, your confusion rapidly develops into heart-thumping stress as you remember you have something really goddamn important to do today — life or death sorta stuff. This is the feverish, ultra-anxiety-inducing sensation that Good Time plunges viewers into from its opening seconds. A sort of cinema delirium, it pulses with a vibrant potency that reminds you film can grab you by the throat; I barely breathed, and I loved every second. – Mike M
No. 11 The Lost City of Z (James Gray)
A sublime film steeped authentically in traditional cinematic grammar, The Lost City of Z is a textural wonder whose emphasis on a simple cut to convey meaning and feeling is likely unmatched this year. I can still feel the sunlight cutting between branches in the jungle, coated in the dense aural tinglings of flowing water and chirping insects. Filled with warmth and adventure, James Gray’s intimate epic stitches time and scenery into a divine sensory experience. In earnest, it is cinematic nirvana. – Mike M.
Loving these lists and comments – thanks for gathering them all in one space for us @Maria.
I will never get enough of these!